


we are but skeletons of this world

by Matloc



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, boy did things escalate quickly, loosely based on Lancelot and Guinevere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 12:18:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5163581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matloc/pseuds/Matloc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seijuurou gives back everything in exchange for the one thing he had stolen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are but skeletons of this world

**Author's Note:**

> someone wanted Lancelot and Guinevere (thanks for the idea, Sleazer!) and I'm here to step on everyone's hopes and dreams s O R R Y i'll write something actually Arthurian some day... gazes into the void

Seijuurou sits silently at the edge of the world, waiting for an abyss rid from stars. They never disappear but surround him like a mirror studded with his sins, glittering. And for each star that burns out, he collects the fumes in penance. Grime cakes his lungs, scraping his innards when he blows out another apology into ashes.

.

Before a man he is a sword—a sword of honor and a sword of loyalty. He swears upon it with one knee to a velvet floor and a kiss to a ring to seal the deal. He swears on his life, writes it in blood, seals the envelope with hot wax.

And then he hides it.

.

i. Meeting Tetsuya was inevitable; he realizes that now. It’s like fate, and if Seijuurou were to fool himself, like weeds would a crown of roses, a tale of parted soulmates engraved in their biographies. But only Seijuurou knows the first draft. Pages crumbling like sand, they will say his role is no more than to steal someone else’s.

ii. At night, Seijuurou repeats his pledge. He is a sword before he’s a man, but when no one’s looking, except the soft embers dancing inside a lantern next to his bed, Seijuurou slips his hand under the covers. He bites his lip and yawns a curse.

iii. Eat red, drink red, bleed red. Forget the blue, sever it from your retinas because it shines solely for the eyes of the king—your great master—never for you. No sky nor sea was ever made for you.

iv. Seijuurou is a sword before he’s a man. His gaze travels once, and as if fate, it meets blue and that’s all it takes for the world to fall to stasis. Baby blues blink at him, waste no second to turn away, taking the world along by the shadows—out of Seijuurou’s grasp. Though perhaps he’s never held anything in his hands in the first place. He has to himself a wavering loyalty, and worship, and a body sculpted by war. In the end, Seijuurou is still a man.

v. Tetsuya’s name is like opium: a curse draped in hymns.

(The next time it happens, and the string of infinities arising after that, a reminder will be dangling on tattered threads, about an envelope he sealed with the color of his blood.

If only his hands could mute his heartbeat as easily as they tear down lives.)

.

He keeps an iron grip on his throat but Tetsuya slips in through the cracks like poisoned fumes, filling his lungs at night. With guilt, with resentment, but mostly it’s Tetsuya’s own name the midnight breeze carries. Seijuurou wakes up once thinking he’s drowning but he looks down, only seeing Tetsuya’s blue hair, tinted in the dark with oceanic depths, splayed on his chest. He ends up choking on the sensation.

.

It comes along more and more frequently, a shadow of temptation encased in bones and flesh painted in last night’s memories, accompanying Seijuurou for another. Ruling over his dreams, and on the cusp of morning, over his lips.

.

Midorima is the first to find out.

The warning of a sword kissing the side of Seijuurou’s neck is as loath as it is inevitable. There’s a chasm gnawing at both sides, two friends broken over love and loyalty. Seijuurou doesn’t take out his sword because he knows he has already abandoned the right. Midorima only lets him live with the promise of pain a thousand times worse.

That night he takes out his envelope instead and throws it into the fireplace. Tetsuya stands next to him wearing a solemn mask, and watches the flames consume the uselessness of an oath.

.

The next day the flames swallow up the entire castle. Seijuurou severs his ties one by one, with the king ideally left for the last. He was their prologue wearing a crown, and Seijuurou will rip off the rest of the pages while they’re still blank. He always plans ahead like that, he’s a product of war-honed instincts. Only he doesn’t think this so much as war as a blood-soaked farewell.

But this time he’d overlooked a certain detail. When it comes to Tetsuya, he often seems to.

Pinned to his bed with a gold-tipped knife in his chest, a gaping face drained of blood is what’s left of the king he’d once served. Seijuurou forgets how to walk. He’s a crumpled mess on the floor, kneeling next to the bed with his sword still in its sheath.

But Tetsuya’s the unforeseen tangent to this story, his ashen face, the red dripping from his trembling hands. “I did this… so you wouldn’t have to,” he chokes out, sounding more like it’s himself he’s trying to convince.

Seijuurou casts a wary look at his lover, who’s furiously rubbing at his cheeks. “Then you shouldn’t cry, Tetsuya.” If those tears too were for his sake, then he does not need them, he does not deserve them. Seijuurou stares at a ghost, then turns back to his king.

The king’s greatest sword, his right hand, his pride and glory, Seijuurou strips himself of all titles and lays his sword on the floor, returning it all.

He stands up, reaches a hand out to Tetsuya, and the both of them silently slip into the shadows.

.

The world can go on without them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> spoiler: they don’t die
> 
>  
> 
> ~~the first half is dedicated to chii because it’s just him and his hand tonight~~


End file.
